webdoctor - 6:42 am on Dec 20, 2006 (gmt 0)

The tone of discussion seems be sliding downhill slightly :-(

With reference to

backups may not be a priority

then I think we all know that DMOZ wasn't the first organisation to find out that backups had been neglected, and it won't be the last.

It's easy to say "<foo> should never have happened" after it has happened, perhaps we should avoid this kind of comment.

With reference to

DMOZ is an application, running on a couple of boxes at AOL, and AOL is totally responsible for the Development (...) the system & database administration, backups (...) and the editors are pretty much clueless

then I think that's a fairly good description of the situation. Editors see DMOZ as a web application. I'd bet you a beer that most editors have no idea how DMOZ works internally, where it's hosted, or who's actually responsible. In fact, since most DMOZ editors aren't necessarily I.T. 'Pros' (for want of a better phrase) I think 99.9% of editors have no idea what a data centre really looks like, and have certainly never been in one.

With reference to

For those that are prepared, there is no storm, let alone a perfect storm

How many businesses are there who can truthfully say there is zero chance they could be hit by a combination of events like the ones that hit DMOZ?

Webmasterworld was hit by exactly this kind of "multiple event" disaster not so very long ago, and was offline for several days as a result, without even a holding page, AND the recovery took quite a while once the site was back up.

I think we all assumed that Brett knew what he was doing (and most of us *still* assume that he knows what he's doing). WW_Watcher, could you give us your analysis of the problems at Webmasterworld? ;-)